Finding happiness is the root goal in most people’s daily lives. This quest is why you get up in the morning and what you want to experience when returning to bed at night. It is the reason you want fulfillment in your career choice. People exhaust vast amounts of time considering the things that might bring them a small bit of happiness or fulfillment. One thing that will excite happiness in anyone is to work with or form a relationship with a person with an intellectual disability.
99 percent of people with Down Syndrome, a common cause of intellectual disabilities, say they are happy with their lives, according to an American Journal of Medical Genetics survey of 284 people. Whether aiding in the education or attending a weekend workshop, the outlooks of the intellectually disabled will be apparent, and more importantly, contagious.
Donna Farrar is a parent to a 30-year-old man with Chiari Malformation, Jason. Jason cognitively operates at an 8-year-old level but has interests and goals as someone considered as typical would have. Carol also works with special needs in public schools.
“He’s not bogged down by material things,” says Farrar. “He just finds the goodness in every bit of the world, even in his saddest.” The average person worries and holds on to things he or she cannot change. Socially, people tend to see others by their physical appearance, their possessions or their social status. People with intellectual disabilities tend to see no such things – only people.
Contrary to popular belief, those with intellectual disabilities do not get their happiness from their disability, but by the perspective their disability allows them to possess. Their outlook is uninfluenced by social constructs like social status, wealth, material possessions, sex and power. The value that they place on themselves and others is placed in their existence, which has inherent value.
97 percent of people in the same survey reported they liked who they are, and 99 percent said they loved their families. 86 percent felt they made friends easily. Love is an intrinsic part of their lives, and it greatly outweighs the amount of love felt in and shown by people without such conditions.
The onset of knowledge of a person with an intellectual disability does not have to be a sad or negative event. 79 percent of over 2,000 parents of people with Down Syndrome reported that their outlook on life was more positive because of their children with their intellectual disability. Not only are people with these conditions happy, but so are the people who have relationships with them.
With the right support, a person with an intellectual disability can live a normal and healthy life, performing daily tasks with short-term and long-term goals as any other person. Most relationships between the typical person and a person with an intellectual disability are extensively mutual.
To fulfill a need for the intellectually disabled is more than just providing a need; the helper is given a chance to learn from a unique perspective. They get to experience people that experience happiness in the trivial details of life.
“The biggest thing for people who work with them is that if we give them the means to communicate, the negative things about them just go away,” says Farrar.